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Library - Miscellaneous
Muse
Muse
M People remain the only act to really cross from the hedonist world of club culture to the commercial world of Top 10 hits with ease. Now with the release of "The Best Of M People", it may be time for the fabulous four of clubland to take it to another level. The M in M People Mike Pickering talks to Jim Carroll about past, present and future events.
Elsewhere this week on Muse, there's a feature on the Greatest Hits albums which are stocked high in your local record store awaiting your cash or plastic. If their compilers were honest, most of these affairs are desperate attempts to cash in on the success of one or two minor-key hits, tunes you may remember with a bit of an effort. After all, there are few who can name one hit by The Levellers let alone justify an album bearing the title "The Levellers' Greatest Hits".
But there are no such problems with M People. Here is a band who have truly earned their stripes, an act with tunes you will recall from nights on the rip, days spent hopping between radio stations and innumerable late-night trips home in a cab. "How Can I Love You More", "One Night In Heaven", "Movin' On Up", "Renaissance" - the list goes on and on and on. M People stumbled on a winning formula and have simply let the hits take care of themselves ever since. With the musical nous of veteran DJ Mike Pickering and long-time session player Paul Heard providing the stout backbone, it's left to new-school diva Heather Small and plumber-turned-percussion superstar Shovell to provide the glitz and the glamour. It's down to the song to do the rest.
Because this is what lies at the heart of the M People appeal, the song and their belief in its powers. As Mike Pickering explains, it is what M People are about and intend to be about for some time to come. "The Best Of doesn't mark the ending of a period or anything like that. It's just, like you say, a handy way of putting all these tracks on an album and getting them out there again. Our attitude certainly hasn't changed. We're not suddenly going to rest on our laurels. In between rehearsals at the moment we're actually writing new songs for the next album. And it's on much the same basis as before. It's our belief in songs and the strong, quality performance of the song which you have with Heather, the way it has been since day one."
Not that this implies a lack of forward-motion. Picketing was one of the most influential British musical movers and shakers of the Eighties, signing the likes of Happy Mondays and James by day, bringing house music to the Hacienda by night. Naturally, he still wants to be ahead of the pack. "I'm always armed with loads of CDs and records because I'm always picking up on new stuff. Once a DJ, always a DJ. So yeah, I would hope we keep changing things all the time. I don't want M People to become staid. But the song is still essential to it all.
"We'd like to get other people in. We're not driven so much by ego to keep it all to ourselves. I think it would be interesting to start working with other people like Timberland because they have something I haven't. Even though I have spent twenty-five, thirty years listening and dancing and really been into funk and soul, those guys have it without having to move a muscle and it really shines through in their music. I think we could learn a lot from them."
While he may not DJ on the same scale as he did in pre-M People days, Pickering's achievements are still enough to guarantee him a place in anyone's clubland hierarchy. "I've got fantastic memories of the Hacienda, but when it went a bit turtle and I was DJing all over the world after that it was never the same. It was like playing the best part of your career at Wembley and then playing out the rest of your years at Stockport or Scunthorpe, it was never the same after that. My whole thing with DJing was to have a regular crowd each week and to be able to introduce new records to that crowd every week. When all you're doing are guest spots it's just kind of boring."
He can also identify with pinpoint accuracy the reasons why clubland is currently suffering. "One, there's just not a great amount of fantastic house records coming out. Two, there's the whole guest DJ syndrome. Three, there's no diversity in the mix anymore. It's all the same beat from the start of the night to the end. The DJ's forte is that they mix fantastically from one record to another. And fourth, club promoters haven't helped. When they were making a fortune they were packing people in, shrimping on air-conditioning, treating punters really badly. Even the so-called superclubs are uncomfortable for the punter and the punter is treated really badly at the door by some ape."
Naturally, he has no plans to return to that lifestyle. Indeed, with the exception of a burning ambition to manage Manchester City, he can't see a life outside music. "I'd be a bit lost without music. I think we all would be. Though Shovell has his budding TV career. He's got a couple of things coming out on one of the new ITV digital stations. He basically wants to be the new Kenny Everett though not in every aspect!"
It's the closeness of M People as a group that really surprises many. Here is a group that live ten minutes from one another and even holiday together in the Caribbean every January. "I know, people can't believe that! We have gravitated towards each other. You see, we're really good friends. We've all been in bands in the past where no one got on so this kind of friendship is rare. I suppose that is one of the reasons for our success, and no you wouldn't get four solo M People projects!"
Reference: http://www.muse.ie/archive/interviews/mpeople.html
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